Writing is an opportunity for me to think about my life, the larger world, and the issues of our times. Reflecting is akin to pondering and one of the women I admire most in the world was know for doing just that. Mary, the Mother of God, must have pondered many things in her heart. Her fiat was a strength which stemmed from God’s grace and her ability to ponder,…

There seems to be a prevailing argument that the world would be just as well off without Christianity – that the best in humanity will save us from the worst in humanity. Yet, if you have spent much time studying history, you will quickly realize that humanity has failed to make Heaven on earth every single time we’ve tried.  But just for the sake of argument, l’d like to consider…

I recently read an article and viewed the accompanying picture which will haunt me for some time. It was about one of the Ebola victims and how after she had died her young daughter was left crying, alone, in their yard and the neighbors did not want to approach for fear of contracting the deadly illness.…

Author Jay Dubya has now completed 3 trilogies in 3 different genre: Action Adventure Novels, YA Fantasy Novels and Adult Satire books.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/jay-dubya

Action Adventure Novel Trilogy:

1) Black Leather and Blue Denim, A 50s Novel

2) The Great Teen Fruit War, A 1960 Novel

3) Frat Brats, A 60s Novel

Young Adult Fantasy Novel Trilogy

1)…

When I first started reading The American Catholic Almanac, I was afraid that it might be boring because I link the term “almanac” with dull statistical facts, but this reference book is anything but boring.  Since I home school my kids, we know a fair amount about American Catholic history, so some of the stories and histories were familiar, but they were taken from…

1) Monday the washing machine was fixed and life began to return to normal – with the exception that every time I saw that particular appliance I felt ridiculously happy. Nothing like clean laundry to do a mother’s heart good.

2) My second daughter performed at her first violin recital on Sunday and played the Canon in D andThe River Flows in You and…

This evening, as most evenings, my kids and I took our sunset stroll and as we walked along and we exchanged stories about the days events – some good, some silly, some challenging – I looked around at the crimson touched leaves, the golden, ready-for harvest corn, the purpling sky, and I breathed in a sigh of relief that we have such beauty as a part of our every day lives.  The angst I sometimes feel,…

1) Our washing machine broke this week and for a while it looked like there was little chance it would be fixed any time soon.  I briefly considered a nearly suicidal attempt to hand wash the clothes (yes, for all nine of us – like I said – it was a brief thought) but then I considered how hard and time consuming that would be, so I then imagined having the kids clean their own clothes.…

I am, at the moment, holding a fussy five year old.  It doesn’t make for the greatest writing conditions – but I suspect God has a point here.  I have long believed that the best gift I can give my kids is my focused attention.  Now that being said, I home school seven of my eight children, and unless I devise some method of dividing myself up into pieces on a routine basis,…

There are a lot of fruit themes in history.  Genesis begins with a garden setting and the command: “You may eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden except the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”  Not even attempting to dissect the motivations of why God would make a tree that He summarily tells His people to shun – I still have the opportunity to…

1) There are a lot of ways to die – but if you’ve gone to the movies recently you’ve probably seen at least 2,465,399,753.2 of those ways, including ingenious new methods of going through buildings. Not to make fun of death.  Death is real and not something to joke about.  But really, I am about apocalypsed out. The daily headlines are scary enough. I need some good…

5 of author Jay Dubya's book titles are now Sold-Out at readingwarehouse.com, a national book and textbook distribution company.

The 5 titles are:

1) The Great Teen Fruit War

2) Black Leather and Blue Denim

3) Frat Brats, A 60s Novel

4) Ron Coyote

5) So Ya' Wanna' Be A Teacher

Here's the webpage for So Ya' Wanna' Be A Teacher.…

  1) Actually getting to Mars might be a little tricky, but I can see why there is some fascination with leaving this world to visit another one – any other one. Sometimes it seems that the troubles we face here are so overwhelming we can’t possibly get past them, while the challenges of a new life somewhere else seem soooo remote. The fantasy of “what if…” outweighs the fears…